Part of the reason I think Fiona is so ready to marry Sean is that he's a drug addict who is ready to put his children first, something she is lacking severely from Frank. The fact that he's so committed to his son shows Fiona that he's husband material and that things aren't gonna be a Frank and Monica repeat. So when Frank exposes Sean at the wedding it hurts her that she can't escape Frank and that addiction haunts her so bad that Sean is no longer the man she thought he was, the man who puts his son first.
So here is my last full Shameless episode ramble for the foreseeable future. I put this off so hard it's very late, but in my defense I was reading a really good fanfic the day I normally write these... But then I was just putting it off. I don't know if I'll come back to doing something like this in the future, or smaller less thorough posts when something catches my brain, but these are definitely sucking more of my time than the enjoyment I'm getting from it is worth.
Still... For all that, we have the season 5 finale. An episode that was so nearly good that I'm even more pissed off with it, and the episode that broke everyone's hearts.
We have! Fiona vacillating some more about Gus vs Sean. Lip severing ties with Amanda by being a dick. Kev and V finally sort of resolving their conflict. Debbie tells Fiona that she's pregnant. Frank and Bianca have fun in the sun in Costa Rica. Ian hitchhikes back to Monica's trailer park home. And Mickey has very sad sex with strangers.
So... This episode did not feel to me like a season finale in any plot except Frank's and Ian's. And maybe Fiona. I think everything, including Fiona and Ian, just felt frustratingly open-ended, and was set up for next season... Except that when that happened previously there had been a clearer climax in the drama in the episode 11 space, while episode 11 here was just a little bit lacking in that climatic drama.
So as a season finale it kind of flops for me... But it's not a bad episode, overall. It just trips on the landing in a couple of areas. Unfortunately including the bits it wanted us to care most about.
I'm gonna start with Kev and V, because... This was a storyline with a lot of dramatic promise that failed to deliver, because the show wanted to focus on how sex is the only meaningful thing in their relationship rather than any of the more interesting deep character drama they could have dealt with. We don't deal with Veronica's issues with motherhood in any meaningful way. We don't address their childcare and emotional struggle in any meaningful way. We have a cheap scene played for comedy where Kev goes to a sexual health clinic after sleeping with a bunch of different women, and we have V feeling insecure about the fact he slept with all those women (apparently not taking into account the fact that he came back to her, so clearly something about all that was unsatisfying to him).
I get it, the cheating was bad. I wish Kev hadn't done all that. And absolutely he should get tested after having that many sexual partners, just on general principle. But having V there to shame him for it and yell at him was cheap comedy at best. And the conversation she has with Carol at the Alibi is another example of Carol giving the most dogshit advice possible. If he likes college girls now, dress up as a college girl. Woman do you hear yourself?!
But V is feeling insecure and so she follows the advice and... the scene that follows starts weird and ends okay. Kev is a bit dense about how he should respond to V when she dresses up for him. And it's fine, I'm not able to answer complex questions just after I'm woken up either, but damnit guys can you not just have an actual conversation?! You never had this problem before, can we work within the characters you've created rather than making them do stupid things for stupid reasons?!
That said, the moment where Kev sits outside the bathroom while V hides and the babies start crying and she's all "you should go see to them" and he's "no i need to see to you" is a well-intentioned moment that doesn't work for me. I get what it's showing, that V learned that the babies need them to give up some parts of their old life, and Kev needs to keep V on his priority list. It's a nice message... I just feel like it's a bit ham-handed.
And also, have you ever tried to have a conversation while a baby is crying? Like really? It is a noise that is specifically biologically ingrained to make you go "baby see to the baby" on a very unpleasant visceral level. So... I find both this and the scene is harkening back to where V tells Kev to stay when the babies are crying very difficult to reconcile with my own experience of parenting.
If anyone, at all, in the entire season had asked V how she was, and got an answer that wasn't sex-related. If Kev and V had had a conversation about childcare and decided that Kev seemed to be better-suited to it. If Kev and V had ended this separation with an actual conversation about the sharing of responsibilities, rather than a sweet but slightly unsatisfying "let's do it together". If any or all of those things had been done, this could have been a very impactful plot with a lot to say. But like how the Carol surrogacy plot in season 3 went, where they could have done interesting things about fertility and poverty but instead went for shock comedy... They've gone for cheapness here and missed a good opportunity.
Le sigh.
Fiona next because she frustrates me in this episode.
After the lovely date with Sean, and her apparent realisation that Sean is better suited to her than Gus, or possibly than any other guy, while also having his shit together in a way that makes him less of a Problem than Jimmy Steve... She hops back into bed with Gus on his return.
I don't know how to feel about this. It seemed like Fiona had already chosen Sean, and this episode introduces another vacillation just for the sake of it. The scenes with Gus don't do anything. There's some apparently decent sex, and they talk about his gig and a song called "betrayal". Gus' band mate tells her to leave him if she doesn't love him because he's too good a guy to do it and she isn't. Which... ouch, but entirely fair. And he comes over to the Gallagher house to let her bitch, but leaves because he doesn't want the kids to get used to having him around... Which is... Well, you know. They're not gonna get used to it from one night, my dude... But the point is made, I guess.
She needs to make a choice.
I hate that the implication is that Gus doesn't. That it's all on her and he doesn't feel some kind of way about her cheating on him. It's a bit garbage. But then, if Gus said "I married you and I meant that so I'm willing to work on this, but if you aren't you need to tell me" but he doesn't actually say that. He doesn't tell her what he's feeling at any point. So meh.
So we get her flouncing off to Sean. Who was fully aware she was married to Gus, so his bitterness at the husband's reappearance seems disingenuous at best. As is her telling him about it in that way like "so Gus is back" rather than "Gus came back from tour early so now I really have to talk with him and figure this shit out." It's all just messy, and not in a "relationships are messy" way... It's messy in a "this scene does not seem to relate fully to the journey we've already seen the characters go on and the show isn't filling in the gaps well enough" way.
In the end, Fiona seems to choose Sean, and implies that she's gonna break up with Gus. Which is fine. But... We don't see her do that, and the episode seems to think the choice is enough of a dramatic finale. But the fallout would have had more emotional impact.
I don't know... The whole thing is just a bit limp. It didn't have a strong enough thread, and I didn't care enough about Gus to believe that she might ever have chosen him. The marriage was always a ridiculous impulsive mistake. Gus was just... A guy.
So that's done with for now and I don't have enough strong feelings about it to talk about it any more. I know Gus reappears briefly in season 6, but there's no scene of the breakup officially, which seems about standard for how much the show seems to care about him.
The best thing about Fiona's plot was the scene towards the start where V comes around and they properly catch-up for what seems like the first time this season. It's lovely that they're giving each other a rundown of what's been going on in a kind of tacit acknowledgement that they haven't been very present with each other, and they've suffered for it. It's a nice scene, though the bit where V admits she was on the pill and sexually harassed from the age of 11 was horrifying, but it was meant to be, particularly with the matter-of-fact delivery.
I like that Fiona starts folding sheets and V helps without a word, they just slot back in together. And it doesn't completely fix the fact that they haven't really been good friends to each other this season, and they don't really know what's been going on for each other, but it does create a framework for things being better between them come next season. Hopefully.
I think I'll go to Debbie next, because she interacts most with Fiona.
The first scene with Debbie is her waking up to Derek leaving, because he fell asleep in her bed and needs to be home before his dad wakes up. And it's kind of sweet and fine... And again she says I love you, and this time Derek says it back. I don't like it, because of the way he seems... Pressured into that response. It's not on his face that he loves her and that's not entirely the awkward teen effect. I feel like he's enjoying his time with her enough that he feels he has to say it to keep her sweet, and that's shitty. Both that he feels that way and that he does it. Having no real insight into Derek's feelings, aside from the very limited scenes we get with him makes this more difficult to read. Either way, I am unhappy about it, but it's effective...assuming I'm reading it as intended and not just projecting my own memories of dropping the L word early in teen relationships because it was expected.
Given that it does seem a normal-ish teen thing to do, though, it's only because of the extra context we have into Debbie that it feels problematic. If they were both throwing I love yous around like confetti and it was a normal teen romance I would think they were naive but it would be fine. But Debbie doesn't have enough self-awareness about her own inexperience, and she's got this nefarious baby trapping plot going on and that makes me cringe when he says it back, because of the delight on her face. He loves her! That means it's gonna work! Nevermind that most of *my* I love you relationships as a teen lasted less than six weeks. Sigh.
Next we have a scene with Fiona with Debbie being peak petty teenager. She's judgy at Fiona about her relationships (oh so you're back together with Gus? What about Sean?) and very passive aggressive about the fact that she's going to take Liam to daycare, like she has been this whole time. And I get it... She has been shouldering a lot of the childcare burden and Fiona has been absolutely dropping that ball. They should have a conversation about it, and Fiona should be less shitty about caring for Liam and the household. She's been garbage especially now that Sammi is gone.
It does seem a bit pointed, though, with no food in the house so Liam's eating pot noodle... Like that situation is rubbish and it doesn't happen overnight. Unless they're only buying a day's worth of food at a time? It's happened numerous times this season, and they're not even seeming as tight for cash as they used to. It's just lack of people doing stuff. Not having Carl or Ian or Lip will contribute to that, but equally that's fewer mouths to feed... So it seems like Debbie is refusing to do grocery shopping out of some kind of protest. I don't know... It's not clear to me what this is supposed to suggest for Debbie, even if I'm clear that Fiona is failing.
Whatever. Debbie is a teen about it. That's fine, and not unjustified. I'm okay with that. I'm less okay with everything else she does.
So... Debbie takes a trip to the pharmacy, and... I guess she's either conflicted about her choices or she doesn't understand how anything works, because she buys a pregnancy test and a morning after pill? It's... Muddled. Again, she's a teenager and I imagine the sex education she received has been minimal or nil, because that's not how anything works. And the pharmacy counter employee is the skeeziest, grossest, most obnoxious person to be serving a teenage girl at the *best* of times. Debbie doesn't know how to react to him so she just keeps putting things in front of him for him to judge? That scene was so gross. If I'd been her, I'd have just run out of there... But I assume he did eventually ring up her purchases. What the fuck ever.
Then, sigh, we have Fiona coming home from work to find Liam watching some zombie horror on the TV, with no Debbie in sight. Fiona goes upstairs and finds Derek in Debbie's room.
So... Obviously Fiona has a right to be pissed off that Debbie is not looking after Liam when she's supposed to be, and he's been left unattended in front of the TV. The level of "agreement" is something that is probably irritatingly unspoken, but Debbie has agreed to look after Liam, so she shouldn't just let him loose. So... Fine with that part of Fiona's anger.
The whole "you're not allowed to have a boy in your bed" part... Well, it's not that I don't agree with this as a rule per se... But she already knew Debbie was having sex. That was a conversation they had. Where did she think Debbie was doing it? If she's going to accept that it happens would she rather it was elsewhere? I don't know... I would also not be comfortable with my 14yo charge having sex in my house, but if she was going to do it anyway I'd probably rather it was somewhere i knew where she is and who she's with?
So maybe it was Fiona reacting in shock to finding Debbie in bed with Derek. That's understandable, but... The reaction seems a little ill-considered. Derek flees, which is fair play. Debbie yells at Fiona, because, yeah... They've done this several times and Fiona never previously noticed or cared because she was too wrapped up in her own shit.
In her anger, for whatever 14yo reason (and this isn't unrealistic, it's just that it's hard to work out why such things spill from the mouths of children) she spills that she's pregnant. Which shocks Fiona into a different mode. And that mode is "well we're going for an abortion tomorrow".
And... Fiona/Debbie communication makes me sad. This whole plot makes me incredibly sad, both for Debbie, and because Fiona is so incapable of seeing anything from Debbie's point of view. She's not wrong, having a baby at 14 is such a life-changing decision and most 14yos are not emotionally, physically or financially equipped to deal with it... But yelling and ultimatums will never get that point across. There are better ways, and Fiona is not emotionally equipped to think of or do those. It's a tragedy.
For one thing, sitting on her bed the next morning to ambush her with more "are you really pregnant, you don't want a baby" stuff first thing in the morning, is a terrible plan. Unless Debbie is the most morning of morning people (and she's a teenager, this seems incredibly unlikely) she's not going to appreciate *any* conversation before she's brushed her teeth and had some coffee. Let alone being judged harshly, told she doesn't know her own mind, and ordered to get an abortion.
Ugh. Fiona handles it so badly. And Debbie has the perfect rejoinder. "You can't have a baby with a guy you barely know!" "Well you *married* a guy you barely know!"
There are good responses to that. Fiona is older and more experienced and she already recognises that getting married was a stupid idea, marriage is something you can end if it's not working while a baby is a while 'nother person forever, and Gus consented to get married while Derek did not consent to make a baby. But! In the moment, it's a great comeback that floors Fiona a bit.
So... It's shitty and it makes me really really sad. So! Moving on.
Lip. Darling Lip. The thing with Helene continues to be fucked up.
Sigh.
So the first scene confuses me. Because Helene is teasing Lip awake, which all seems fine until you realise that he's tied up, and Helene immediately starts pouring wine on him as foreplay. All of which I have no particular problem with... But at which point did Theo come in to watch? I don't know, the set up with Theo in the cuck chair is all just a bit odd. And it's another example of Helene being fucked up asking Lip if he wants to stop if it's weird. It's a very dodgy dynamic. But I guess we knew that. Sigh.
The rest of the episode for Lip is him dealing with Amanda. Poor Amanda. Their relationship was fun while it was equal, but now he is no longer interested in her... which is fine, but he's a dick about it, which is not. When he initially tells her about Helene, she is fine until it's clear that he is picking her over Amanda... And here he is still picking Helene, and Amanda is obviously upset about it.
Amanda's lesbian roommate has become a bit much... I can't decide if I like this detail or not. I think on balance I find it annoying, especially as the show is not overly abundant in its sapphic representation, but it's a small detail that gets mostly ignored. Maybe that's part of the problem?
Anyway, while hiding from said roommate, Amanda hangs out and studies in Lip's room. He sees her, is dismissive and a little rude, but says she can stay and hang out while he's out. She buys him pizza, which is cold when he returns, and she is obviously hoping for something, but gets nothing from Lip. He's been in the physics lab... Which is possibly the first time we've heard him refer to a class for something we know he's interested in? Bit weird, that, cos we've only seen him in his requirement classes that aren't his primary investment. But yay, physics?
Lip is just such a dick, and I completely get why Amanda is pissed off. It would be one thing if he said "I'm not really feeling this any more let's just be friends" but he doesn't actually know how to be friends without benefits. So he's not shutting her down or being clear in his communication. He's just being a dick. And rather than deal with her, he just leaves again, presumably hoping she'll get the point and leave. Which I guess she does eventually.
But when are sees him again, it's to punch him in the face. Which is fair. It's a great scene. Nichole Sakura is great, and Jeremy Allen White is great, and there's a lot of heart in that scene... Lip's surprise and anger, Amanda's heartbreak and frustration, giving way to anger. Really Lip, though, could you just not be a dick? I realise she'd never let on that she had these kind of feelings, and so he probably didn't realise because he's an idiot, but even if it was just friends with benefits and casual sex, his behaviour towards her was incredibly dickish.
That's Lip, though.
The problem with this episode is that it wraps up the Amanda story without really addressing any of the ongoing themes for Lip. It's nothing to do with his South Side vs college stuff, it's just another romantic failure, very similar to his failure with Mandy where he is entirely emotionally unavailable. I guess at least he didn't lead Amanda on as much or as long. It's good, but it feels like Lip's arc for the season is left on a kind of unfinished note.
So let's go somewhere else.
Frank! This is the last episode of the best Frank plot! And it's a lot sadder but very poignant and good nonetheless.
Frank and Bianca are in, presumably Costa Rica, as that's what Bianca said... But definitely a Spanish-speaking country.
We see that things have moved on a bit, and Bianca is suffering from a lot of pain, mitigated by a bunch of drugs they have picked up locally... The up and down of it is well-handled, especially with the kind of bright desperation on the edge of Bianca's performance that makes it seem like even when things aren't so bad, she's very aware of everything.
Frank is beautifully played in these scenes, too. He's still horny and drug and drink-seeking. He's still Frank, but there's something around the edge where he acts genuinely compassionate towards her. He doesn't want her to die, and he doesn't want her to be in pain, but accepts her decision and knows that if he wants to stay with her he needs to not bring it up again as something she could prevent. It's tragic and powerful, and a genuinely interesting and different side of Frank.
Along the way, we have Bianca doing a lot of swimming in the sea ("sharks feed before dawn" "that's what makes it fun") and she buys a gun. She suggests it with the same playfulness she suggested buying crack or getting tattoos... It's all part of the game, trying new things.
Only it's turns out she's trying Russian roulette, and high as the thrill is, Frank is not impressed. The struggle for the gun is tense, and when it goes off and she realises she's shot him (a graze on his arm to match the one from Sammi on the other, but less serious) he laughs and she cries... Her fear that she'd hurt someone else while not caring about herself is so powerful. It's such a great scene.
We see Frank wake up in the night to find her curled up and moaning in pain, and he helps her take more meds... The poignancy of Frank trying to moderate her intake is not lost, but she wins. And she said she tried to shoot herself but couldn't. And she thanks him for helping her and making her happy. The idea of Frank making someone happy is... A mindfuck. We see this relationship in contrast to the others we've seen, of him with Monica and his kids, with Sheila, with Dotty... Having one person he'd genuinely helped by being himself, it's a strong showing. I really love it, and I love Bianca.
And I was very sad when she swam off into the sea, never to return.
It's the first plot in a bit that's stirring up the old brain worms. Thinking about the fact that I'm other circumstances, Frank and Bianca would only have met in very asymmetric circumstances as doctor and patient, and she would never have considered drinking with him, let alone sleeping with him. But they do have a connection that works in that moment, and that makes the fact that it's so ephemeral extra gut-wrenching. It's beautiful stuff.
She leaves him with the remainder of her drugs, and presumably enough money to get himself back to Chicago, given that he is back at the Gallagher house by the end credits of the episode.
And thus ends the best Frank ever got.
Which leaves me with Mickey and Ian.
Mickey... Has some very sad sex, because this is apparently the way Shameless shows on screen that Mickey is sad about Ian being gone. He fucks a woman, for whatever reason... It's unclear to me what they were going for with that? Like, I get him sleeping with other people because he's angry and sad and those are all entwined with horny with them... but is his choice about Mickey trying to go back into the closet and pretend he's not really gay, that's just something about Ian. Or perhaps it's a convenience thing; we've seen he can easily pick up girls, so maybe she was just available. Maybe she picked him up, even, and he just went with it. I don't know... That scene bugs me. For a lot of reasons, actually... Like once again we see more of Mickey sleeping with a random woman than we do of him with Ian ever in the entire series. Even in season 10 and 11, we only get snatches of their sex scenes and they end with disappointment. The *one* sex scene they ever filmed (that I know of) with both of them getting a happy ending got cut.
So fuck that, basically.
Later in the episode we see him attempt to call Ian, then cruise a guy in the park... We don't see what happens after that, which again is emblematic of the Pattern with gay sex on this show... But I don't actually want to see it, in this case, I just kind of want to know where Mickey's head is at. Does this one also end with disappointment like with the woman, or does this have a more pleasurable (if not desirable) outcome.
Whatever, we don't know, so we'll just prop that all up with headcanons, I guess. Like everything else.
That's all we see of Mickey on his own. Two sad sex scenes. We see he hasn't entirely given up on Ian, cos he's still calling, but he's definitely feeling some kind of way about him being gone, and some of the Gallagher's despair about it has rubbed off.
The episode didn't make me cry. But thinking about it too much might... That's where I am with a lot of this stuff.
Then we have Ian. Ian who is spaced out traveling with Monica and already seems to be regretting his decisions, or at least feeling generally despondent about the state of his life. Cameron does such a wonderful job in this episode of getting across that despondency, feeling like his family has given up on him, but increasingly seeing that Monica isn't actually a better option. It's... So hard to watch.
The scene where they go to a diner and he watches her slink off with a trucker to get cash, and he thinks she's going to blow him or something for the money, but she's back too quickly. The realisation and the feelings on his face about it are powerful, probably remembering his trip with Yevgeny.
Then he asks her if she actually has money to pay for everything or if they're going to have to escape out the window... The way he looks at her when he tells the story from his childhood and Monica's "we had some good times didn't we?!" Just... The obliviousness of that. He was not telling a good story, Monica. He was not happy about that memory. And she's just laughing it off... Monica is so well drawn in this episode, just at her most awful, guiding Ian on a path of self-destruction because she's so unwilling to take care of herself or anyone else.
Finally they reach Monica's home where she lives with her boyfriend, who turns out to be barely older than Ian. And he's a dick. And a meth dealer.
I feel like they just about pull this all off, with Monica doing her whole "we can be happy. I'm happy!" Spiel while she's clearly in an abusive relationship with an asshole, doing very illegal things. Ian knows from repeated experience that Monica will tire of him and leave, or he'll have to leave, and no amount of her "you're so beautiful I did good making you" will mitigate the pain of that.
So, beautiful as the stars are, he leaves.
The 'compare and contrast' of Monica and Ian is a well-trodden story at this point of the season. He's not her. He shares a diagnosis, and some of the ways his symptoms present are similar... But he's fundamentally a different person and I think it takes this trip with her to fully realise that, even while he was protesting it before.
It's good. It all hits where it's supposed to, and it's sad watching Ian go through all this. Because even though he sees that he's not Monica and knows he can't stay with her, he clearly takes a lot of her shit on board. When she says "people like us can be happy with people who accept us for who we are" he sees that she's damaging herself and that she isn't really happy, not deep down.
Even while he knows he's not like Monica, he sees how much Monica hurts the people who love her, and the answer to that is to cut those people off.
The breakup scene breaks my heart, but again, mostly after the fact when I think about it. When Mickey sees his call and panics that he's missed it and calls back instantly because he'll come running for Ian whenever wherever. And then he finds him and it's "I don't want you worrying about me, waiting for me to do my next crazy shit" it's "too much is wrong with me" but also "you can't fix me because I'm not broken". The delivery is strong enough that I almost make sense of it, but it feels like a lot of lines Ian rehearsed all coming out half-muddled with a tonne of emotion behind it.
And Mickey? Mickey "I love you" and "it means we take care of each other" and the "so this is it. This is you breaking up with me?" "Fuck."
And. We. Break. Crumble. Crunch.
That moment, that scene is so ripe with possibilities and it makes me so angry. Because the breakup itself isn't the problem; I could totally see Ian breaking up with Mickey as a plot point that gave way to a different season 6 arc. Ian learning to live and manage with his diagnosis, Mickey learning to find other things in his life rather than hanging his everything on Ian... And then they could come back together in the future as different people.
And I know the side where Noel Fisher was leaving, and I *hate* that they didn't pay him his due and keep him on.
But more than that, I *hate* the sendoff Mickey gets here. Sammi turning up with a gun makes no sense... It's stupid. Mickey running like that and taunting her while she shoots at him makes no sense. Ian letting Mickey run without trying to do anything to Sammi or help in any way makes no sense, breakup or no. It's ridiculous. It's stupid. It undermines all the emotional impact of the breakup in a way that is just disrespectful to the characters. It's not even like the rug-pull we've had time and again of "they're happy, psych! Something shitty happens". It's just... They're sad and a major and very dramatic moment has happened and now we're going do a stupid dance with clown shoes and a ridiculous hat. It is stupid and tone deaf, and I hate it so much.
Sigh. What a way to end it.
Except it isn't quite the end, I guess... We get the little vignettes of Debbie taking a pregnancy test, and Ian and Lip talking in the van when Frank comes home, and then we see Carl and Chuckie facing off in juvie with their respective crews. It's all a bit of a weird way to end a season.
Overall, I quite like this episode. It's has some good moments. I love the title, and the way it does focus around the way all these characters struggle with relationships in their different ways. Frank's self-interestedness, Fiona's impulsivity, Lip's emotional unavailability, Debbie's fear of abandonment, and Ian's new fear of hurting Mickey because of who he is.
But I am very sad about all the missed opportunities it represents, and the stories they could have told instead.
Time to go write some fix-its, maybe.
So, as I said at the start this will probably be the last of these I do. I might do the odd meta post but if I continue my rewatch (still undecided for the moment) I'm not going to do these big write ups. For those who have read and commented along the way, I'm glad you joined me and thank you! If you're reading this, I hope my brain splurges have been enjoyable to you in some way... Otherwise wtf are you still doing here 😆.
I feel so bad for him. This is my first time watching the show, i know a few spoilers, but i don't know about him
But i know. From the moment he said to Fiona she wasn't right for him, i knew. He was going to end up falling. And he is
I feel like I'm watching a bomb, and in some moment it's going to explode. He's going to end up consuming something. And in some way, he already is
He is so good for Fiona, Fiona needs to know it's possible to do better. Fiona needs to learn that if she wants to be away from addictions, she needs to fight every day. And it's something she needs so much, because she doesn't have that example. She needs it. And she needs someone who understands how fucking difficult it's to be one bad decision away from being in the bottom
She needs him, and she probably can't make herself go away from him, because he is the type of calm she needs to know it exists. Of course she can be honest with him, because she knows he'll understand. He understands.
And he wants her, he wants her so much, but he can see why he shouldn't, he can see how close she is from the things that destroyed him. The things he's trying to avoid. She is one of those things, but she's the things that isn't directly damaging
You can understand why drugs are bad, you can see them and recognise it. But the actions of a persons aren't like that. The things he is addicted and Fiona has are in her personality, are things you can't see, and are things that you don't directly see as good or bad
So it isn't a surprise that she is the kind of addiction that will end up making him fall. Because it's the kind you see but don't see. It's the kind you identified when you're alright but when you aren't you can make yourself believe it's safe. And she needs help, and he knows it. He wants to help her
When i watch them the image in my mind it's Fiona surrounded by shadows, each shadow being addictions, and Sean looking at her from the outside thinking "I got out of there, I can help her get out of there."
And then he wants to go in, but Fiona is human, and humans are formed from the environment they have. And when you're surrounded by shadows, it's no wonder you have a little bit in you.
So he tries to tell her to step to the edge, to step away from the center, but even if she walks to the edge, even if they're on the horizon of that abyss, even if he manages to get Fiona to step out of there
She still has part of those shadows, and so does he. Because he was there too
And the shadows in her are bound to make his reappear. He's destined to end up surrounded. Destined to fall
I just realized I never talked about season 6, 7 and 8 of shameless and frankly, I can't tell them apart at this point, but my highlights were: trevor educating everyone on the show plus audience about trans people. (although I find his and ian's relationship a tiny bit abundant at this point.) of course the very few mickey/ian scenes. (even though I was a bit confused that ian was in love with him again all of a sudden? he seemed like he didn't care at all when mickey was in prison, but maybe that was the bp? still, it was nice to see them be so open and heartfelt with each other.) monica dying. (as in, not her dying itself, but the plot it opened up. I really enjoyed these few episodes, especially when they danced and were happy.) v, kev and svetlana's throuple while it lasted. (they did her so dirty in the end! what she did was not cool, but they basically enslaved her in season 8. a survivor of sex slavery. but kev made me laugh out loud several times in the past season.)
what I didn't like was fiona becoming a super capitalist. (I mean I get it, whatever, but I just thought that was so boring and I was simply not rooting for her.) and then all her romance shananigans from season 6 onwards. (does she want a boyfriend or not? I do not care. I actually liked sean to a certain point, but only when he was not with fiona oops.) caleb. (I get why he was there but their breakup was so stupid and sterotyping bi people.) honestly I think I just didn't like season 6 that much. (except for the throuple.)
ok, that's it. even frank was a bit boring at times in season 8, so I'm not at my shameless-loving peak right now, but knowing fiona will leave next season will keep me going :) (I do not know why I dislike her so much, I feel almost bad.)
